For this task, you will find that the right side of your brain is most useful. This side is all about novelty and initial processing. With respect to images it is about the shape of things and what they actually look like.
Unfortunately the left hemisphere (which is often misleadingly overemphasized as 'dominant' and 'the language side') does tend to take over on tasks like this; It deals more with known information and labels, and tends to think it has it all sussed and knows what is going on.
It will categorize the subject matter and tell you how it ought to look. You will end up with a clichéd image that will probably be factually right but essentially wrong; have the right components in the wrong ratios.
In the case of drawing, this is not useful; you need to be able to draw what you actually see, (or in the case of abstract art, the individual elements, gestures, and impressions that your visual system perceives) and not what your brain secretly thinks it is supposed to see.
To solve this, you can either focus on drawing the negative space around the subject matter (for example, the spaces BETWEEN the fingers) or you can distort the image so that it is no longer processed as a particular category by turning it upside down, or by taking a photo and using drastic and wanton photoshop to make it unrecognizable but for the basic structure.
Another problem with the visual processing systems is that they adapt to an unchanging stimulus. Leep firing the same wiring in the brain and it will start to ignore it after a while. Stare at an image on an easel for a while and it will lose it's salience.
The solution here is to turn the painting itself upside down, gaze at its reflection in a mirror, or to take a photo, and shrink/enlarge it.
Previously invisible mistakes* will emerge and glare at you -- do not lose heart!!!
Also, I tend to have three or four paintings going at once, and go from one to the other every few minutes. It reduces the perceptual blindness.
Of course, art is not about copying; That is far better acheived with a camera. It is also good for the drawer to have an artistic-not-autistic eye that can decide what details to leave out, and which to emphasize or even distort.
Now I just have to figure out how to play music with the right side of the brain....
* Of course, because there are no rules in art (is that not its definition?), there are no mistakes. There is, however, such a thing as a painting where you can see what the artist was trying-to-do. It can either be fixed, or the quality within the image that failed can be violently but obviously obliterated. This is fun.
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